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Friday, August 31, 2012

Bagskart.com Review

This is a review for the online shopping portal BagsKart.com and it’s three sister sites LensKart.com, WatchKart.com and JewelsKart.com. My experience relates to bagskart.com only but because it is the same business and same employees, I have included the sister sites in the review.

Bagskart.com Review (Bagskart.com and sister sites)

This leap year, 29 Feb 2012, I had my first horrible online shopping experience through bagskart.com and I am pretty amazed at them still finding a way to my inbox despite all the email filters I have applied. This business has the sweetest mouthed customer service and the bitterest shopping experience.

I was lured to their site through a Facebook ad and the beautiful pictures of bags and high brand names made me place an order. I got to know of a Republic day discount offer through their Facebook page but couldn’t place the order. Around Feb end, I was surprised to see that the same % of discount was still available through a different coupon code.

So I finalized the leather bag I wanted to buy and chatted online with their representative to confirm a few details. The rep checked with his senior and confirmed that the bag buckles are zipper are made of high quality brass and that they do a stringent check on all products before shipping out and blah blah. I even did a thorough check on their return policy. Finally, I checked courier options and placed an order for a WENZ hand bag and a Kara clutch on Feb 29, early morning.

Bagskart.com order details. Click on pic to see enlarged view

Mar 1, I received a call from DTDC asking me to come collect it, or they will deliver it 4 days later. I was pretty IMPRESSED, wow, I usually get my online orders in 6 days and this has come in 2 days! Anyways, after having an argument with the courier guy, I made Bagskart deal with the courier and had them deliver to my place the next day. But this was the start of my problems and not the end!

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE ORDER?

The order arrived in a polythene bag with lots of tape, leaving no other way to open it than to tear or cut open with scissors. It was a great turn off. According to their return policy, if you do not like your order, you need to send it back in the exact same packing in which it had arrived. They either have it reverse picked up or you can courier it back to them and they refund up to Rs 100 as courier charges.

Well, I tore off the packet and found a false leather handbag with silver colored polished buckles (not brass as promised), and a very dirty clutch. Both the items looked AMAZINGLY beautiful when I had seen them on the website and now holding the actual items in my hand, I was literally into tears. The handbag material was far from leather and the clutch was supposed to be bright red, but it was a dirty maroonish dull color as if the leather was not even properly finished in the tannery. Also, the items smelt really bad. I wish I had clicked the pictures of the order but I had repacked them immediately.And here began my ordeal!

To deal with such mismatches, see this clause in their Terms and Conditions. They had removed it when I raised a dispute and have now re-added after changing the wording:

"The Company, to the best of its knowledge, has displayed or attempts to display on the Website/s as accurately as is possible, colours of the Products that is displayed on the Website/s. However, the colours visible to You is solely dependent on Your monitor. Hence, no guarantee is provided by the Company regarding Your visibility of the colours on the Website/s.

The Company does not provide any warranty or guarantee that the Product descriptions are accurate, complete, reliable, current, or error-free. If a Product offered by the Website/s is not as described, Your sole remedy is to return it in unused, unsoiled and resale condition.”

I immediately tried calling them but could never got through their phone line. Sent them a detailed email and also left a callback request on their site. Got a call back at 9 PM and spoke with a guy called Mukul who assured that once the product reaches back their warehouse, their team will inspect it and initiate a refund immediately within a day, but I will need to be patient. I chatted with them several times every day, sent numerous emails, wasted a lot of money in calling them and never getting through, so much so I finally started leaving stingy messages on their Facebook page. I met more people like me who were also fighting for their refund. The reverse pickup never happened and my credit card statement generated with 2000 bucks spent at bagskart. I paid that.

I sucked the blood out of them and finally made them call me and 25 days later at March end, the order was reverse picked up. The courier told me their server was down for 20 days and that they didn’t receive a reverse pickup request. I wonder how such courier companies operate and also why didn’t bagskart call them to check if reverse pickup hadn’t happened for so long.

It reached their warehouse on the second day but I received no intimation from them about the refund. After another rigorous follow up for 10 days, I had a word with one of their managers Utkarsh, who intervened and next day a woman named Sonia talked to me. She said she has noted my feedback, offered a ‘replacement’ for the Nth time, which I refused and I got my refund within 2 hours of talking to her. All this happened after my threatening them of leaving reviews on mouthshut.com and every possible platform. Whatever chats I had with their customer service, I chose to save them, which saved my email ID on their server and it was added to ALL their mailing lists for future harassment. Thank you Bagskart.com because you are a big inspiration behind my blog.

BAGSKART.COM UNETHICAL BUSINESS PRACTICES

The product photographs on their website are photoshopped. The items look very very pretty and attractive online but the actual items turned out to be completely different. There were many other customers who ordered around the same time and had the same bad experience. One person couldn’t even recognize his ordered items, they were that bad, and the poor guy kept writing on their Facebook page that this is not what he ordered.

My Mother bought a Wenz handbag from a local reputed store last week. It has a proper warranty/authenticity card and complete brand information. The buckles and zipper are very sturdy and high quality. It is a genuine Wenz handbag and confirms that what I received from Bagskart was FAKE.

The business always has 10-15% off discount going on which lures new customers to buy. Once customers complain back about the poor quality order, Bagskart turns a deaf ear to them. I got my money back, but the others I met on their Facebook page never got it back.

They have a paid number but you can never ever get through it. Once you dial in, your call is connected and you can hear their offers. The call never reaches an agent and after 5 min you reach their voicemail.

They keep promising to look into the matter but nobody ever gets back to the customer, once a customer is stuck with a bad order.

They deliberately do not respond to you for a very long time to make you reach a saturation point, after which they start offering you a ‘replacement’ and many customers agree for a replacement order thinking at least that way their money won’t go waste. But what if the replacement order is of the same quality? Then only God can save you!

The business has numerous email IDs and misuse your email information. Once you create an account with them, a normal person with limited technical knowledge would just cry at being spammed so much. If you block or ‘mark spam’ any of their emails, the next day they start sending you emails through a different domain name. See how many I have blocked through Gmail filter and I am still receiving emails from them. I even tried ‘Unsubscribe’ which gave me temporary relief but after a month, I started receiving promotional emails from more new domain names.

Different domain names used by bagskart.com to Spam customers

I have steered clear of them because most of their emails from new domain names now land in my Spam box but today one email reached my inbox again, which was a fond reminder of how badly I wanted to write this review.

Have you ever come across such a lousy, blood sucking business? Do share your experience in the comments to help out other online customers.

5 comments:

Well to take a screenshot for this post, I had logged into my bagskart.com account and guess what, I have again started receiving emails from them from a new domain. BagsKart@branded-bags.in They are persistence personified!

Hey gagan.. I was unable to comment on the other posts. Read ur sofy side walls and biotique foot cream.Thanks for letting us know your honest reviews. It helps us in chosing the best for us and for our loved ones :)Keep up the good work.Where is your GFC button. I would love to follow u :)

Hey Appu, thanks for the lovely comments. I haven't added the GFC button yet, just using the normal 'Subscribe by Email' because I am not following other blogs yet. I am honored to know u would like to follow my blog. Please subscribe if possible and I will subscribe to yours :)

All the search queries that bring people to this article are from those who are struggling to get a reverse pickup done. If you need any help, email me at onlygraymattermatters@gmail.com. I had given someone the phone # of one of their managers. Not sure if I still hv the number, but can check if you need. All the best! I really wish this business could just be banned, it is still creating such bad experiences for customers.

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Lifesutra By Gagan

About Me

I am a powerful mind, soaring high on the wings of creativity, supported by the strong winds of knowledge. I try, I fall, I try I succeed, I try, I experience; I experience, I learn; I learn, I share; I share, I feel happy. I am inspired by my unquenchable thirst for knowledge and my hunger to share my experiences with the world. Bad products and experiences turn me off. Hence this is my small effort to create better life experiences for others by helping them make informed choices through my product reviews.
"I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.”
― Dawna Markova, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion